I have read Rinpoche's writings and other's writings talking about him.
funny how every human loves to get intoxicated.
Trungpa was also known for smoking tobacco and for liberal use of alcohol;
[50] many who knew him characterized him as an alcoholic.
[51][52] He began drinking occasionally shortly after arriving in India.
[53] Before coming to the US, Trungpa drove a sports car into a joke shop in
Dumfries, Scotland.
[54] While his companion was not seriously injured,
[55] Trungpa was left partially paralyzed. Later, he described this event as a pivotal moment that inspired the course of his teachings. Some accounts ascribe the accident to drinking.
[56][57] Others suggest he may have had a stroke.
[58][59] According to Trungpa himself, he blacked out.
[60]
Trungpa often combined drinking with teaching. David Chadwick recounts:
[61] "Suzuki [Roshi] asked Trungpa to give a talk to the students in the zendo the next night. Trungpa walked in tipsy and sat on the edge of the altar platform with his feet dangling. But he delivered a crystal-clear talk, which some felt had a quality – like Suzuki's talks – of not only being about the dharma but being itself the dharma." In some instances Trungpa was too drunk to walk and had to be carried.
[57] Also, according to his student
John Steinbeck IV and his wife, on a couple of occasions Trungpa's speech was unintelligible.
[62] One woman reported serving him "big glasses of gin first thing in the morning."
[27]
The Steinbecks wrote a sharply critical memoir of their lives with Trungpa in which they claim that, in addition to alcohol, he used $40,000 a year worth of
cocaine, and used
Seconal to come down from the cocaine. The cocaine use, say the Steinbecks, was kept secret from the wider Vajradhatu community.
[63]
